Imagine these facts in a force majeure dispute (as presented in Point Energy Partners Permian LLC et al. v. MRC Permian Company).
Lessee (MRC) invokes the force majeure provision of an oil and gas lease, asserting that “wellbore instability” on a well on an unrelated lease requires the lessee to effectively redrill portions of
Lollygag: To fool around and waste time; dawdle. As in, “I lollygagged for 15 years after filing my suit and obtained a less-than-optimal result.”
Gramwich Oil and Gas Corporation et al v. Meng addressed claims for lease termination, repudiation, laches, cessation of production, and failure to produce in paying quantities. The facts are dense and the savings clause at issue is sui generis, so I won’t go into lots of detail. The takeaway: If you have a claim, prosecute it.
The facts
Continue Reading Lessor Prevails in Texas Lease Termination Dispute
Quick answer: It depends on what the lease says. Last week featured a tug-of-war between a producer and the community in which it operates; this week in HJSA No. 3 LP v. Sundown Energy LP it’s the producer and the lessor.
HJSA owns the mineral estate under 30,540 acres in Ward County, Texas. Sundown is the lessee. After six years the lease could be maintained only as to individual tracts from which there was production in paying quantities and as to other tracts only if Sundown was engaged in a “continuous drilling program”.
Dueling lease provisions (emphasis mine)
Paragraph 7B says:
The first such continuous development well shall be spudded in on or before the sixth anniversary of the Effective Date, with no more than 120 days to elapse between completion or abandonment of operations on one well and the commencement of drilling operations on the next ensuing well.
Paragraph 18 is a 90-day temporary cessation clause that defines drilling operations as:
“ … actual operations … (spud-in with equipment capable of drilling to Lessee’s objective depth); reworking operations, including fracturing and acidizing; and reconditioning, … “.
Continue Reading Spudding? Reworking? What are “Operations” Under an Oil and Gas Lease?
Co-author Trevor Lawhorn ∗Escondido and Justapor. Next up on Tiny Desk Concert? Good guess, but no. They are the parties in Escondido v. Justapor, a Texas case presenting the perils of lease termination clauses and vaguely-drawn contracts.
The agreements
Justapor as lessor and Escondido as lessee entered into an oil and gas lease
We recently discussed failure to produce in paying quantities. Another decision involving the same lessee had a different result. Why?
The question in both cases was whether the well was capable of producing in paying quantities and whether a reasonably prudent operator would continue to operate the well.
In the new
One consequence of falling oil prices is leases that cease to produce in paying quantities. The producer’s question: How soon must the well return to profitability? The answer in BP American Production Company v. Laddex, Ltd. is, a “reasonable” period, to be determined by the jury and not the judge.
The Magic Well
The
Would this scenario keep you up at night? Your lease does not produce from May through August because a leak in a heater-treater makes it impossible or impractical to produce the well. Problems such as access to the site during rainy weather make repairs difficult. You are beyond the primary term. The top- lessee lurks.
Other than say, $8.00 crude, the recent national election, or a top-five recruiting class by your most-reviled gridiron enemies, few events are as likely to work an operator into a worst-case-scenario frenzy as a lease termination claim. Lessors love ‘em, of course!
The question of the day:
In a head-to-head contest between a Louisiana statute
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns —